Now if the doctrines of policy contained in these preambles, and the force of these examples in the Acts of Parliaments, avail anything, what can be said against applying them with regard to America?  Are not the people of America as much Englishmen as the Welsh?  The preamble of the Act of Henry the Eighth says the Welsh speak a language no way resembling that of his Majesty’s English subjects.  Are the Americans not as numerous?  If we may trust the learned and accurate Judge Barrington’s account of North Wales, and take that as a standard to measure the rest, there is no comparison.  The people cannot amount to above 200,000; not a tenth part of the number in the Colonies.  Is America in rebellion?  Wales was hardly ever free from it.  Have you at tempted to govern America by penal statutes?  You made fifteen for Wales.  But your legislative authority is perfect with regard to America.  Was it less perfect in Wales, Chester, and Durham?  But America is virtually represented.  What! does the electric force of virtual representation more easily pass over the Atlantic than pervade Wales,—­which lies in your neighborhood—­or than Chester and Durham, surrounded by abundance of representation that is actual and palpable?  But, Sir, your ancestors thought this sort of virtual representation, however ample, to be totally insufficient for the freedom of the inhabitants of territories that are so near, and comparatively so inconsiderable.  How then can I think it sufficient for those which are infinitely greater, and infinitely more remote?

You will now, Sir, perhaps imagine that I am on the point of proposing to you a scheme for a representation of the Colonies in Parliament.  Perhaps I might be inclined to entertain some such thought; but a great flood stops me in my course.  Opposuit natura. [Footnote:  50 ]—­I cannot remove the eternal barriers of the creation.  The thing, in that mode, I do not know to be possible.  As I meddle with no theory,[Footnote:  51] I do not absolutely assert the impracticability of such a representation; but I do not see my way to it, and those who have been more confident have not been more successful.  However, the arm of public benevolence is not shortened, and there are often several means to the same end.  What nature has disjoined in one way, wisdom may unite in another.  When we cannot give the benefit as we would wish, let us not refuse it altogether.  If we cannot give the principal, let us find a substitute.  But how?  Where?  What substitute?

Fortunately I am not obliged, for the ways and means of this substitute, to tax my own unproductive invention.  I am not even obliged to go to the rich treasury of the fertile framers of imaginary commonwealths—­not to the Republic of Plato, [Footnote:  52] not to the Utopia of More, [Footnote:  52] not to the Oceana of Harrington.  It is before me—­it is at my feet,

   “And the rude swain Treads daily on it with his clouted shoon.”
   [Footnote:  53]